There was clearly a lot more to Emilia Clarke‘s Qi’ra than met the eye. But unless the actress ends up rejoining the Star Wars franchise in a Disney Plus exclusive, something that’s been rumored on multiple occasions, then we won’t be getting to find out what really makes her tick.
The good news for fans of the expanded universe is that Qi’ra has made her return to official canon in the War of the Bounty Hunters comic book series, where she’s been revealed as the new leader of Crimson Dawn. Clarke revealed that she hasn’t been approached for a return to a galaxy far, far away just yet, but she has sought to pour cold water on a popular fan theory to have made the rounds in the aftermath of Solo.
Her connection to Darth Maul was deliberately left open-ended, and was poised to be continued in the sequel we’ll never get to see despite the best efforts of the fanbase, but one line of inquiry posited that Qi’ra was the one who tipped off Enfys Nest about Han Solo and Tobias Beckett’s attempts to pull off the train heist.
However, Emilia Clarke offered her own opinion on the matter, which included the revelation that she’d written pages upon pages of potential backstory and motivations for Qi’ra, had the opportunity to continue on in the role presented itself.
“Oh my goodness! That’s a really, really juicy one. I wrote pages about Qi’ra, behind-the-scenes Qi’ra, and all of the other stuff that was going on. But I think it is only when she sees Han that she realizes that there is a way out. That’s what I was playing. That’s definitely where I was at. I don’t think she felt herself to be strong enough at that point to go on and escape Dryden’s grip.
I think that Han is the slap around the face that made her go, ‘I was a whole person. I was this other thing. Where have the last three years gone?’. So it was that kind of thing, but I think your theory is very good. She had to have a plan before, you know what I mean? She had to go into that situation with her own agenda and with her own plan, that the audience then catches up with after the fact.”
The actress who embodied the character certainly has her own opinions on what really drove Qi’ra’s betrayal, but it remains completely open to interpretation seeing as we never got to revisit any of Solo‘s plot threads on the big screen. Fingers crossed, then, that the Disney Plus lineup will eventually dip into an aspect of the timeline that Star Wars fans would love to see more of.
Published: Jun 22, 2021 07:20 am